


some things are meant to be

by ladykestrel



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, not your typical coffee shop au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-26 16:00:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2657945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladykestrel/pseuds/ladykestrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because there was no such thing as fate, and coffee lids did not foretell your future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	some things are meant to be

**Author's Note:**

> I have this bottle cap app that gives you one fortune a day. It's usually crap like "you have a beautiful smile" or "love is just around the corner". But a while ago, I got a cap that said "forgive him" and that's how this fic was born.

Fate was something people put their beliefs in, so they can relieve the pain. Cope with the present. Justify the past. Look forward to the future. It was all a hoax, sprung up from a hopeless moment, an easy smile, a meaningful look across the room.

Fate was not something that simply existed. It was not real.

Skye had never been a believer. Not in God, not in destiny, not in any higher power mankind made up just to make it through the day. It was all delusions and denial. A pat on the back, a good job, buddy.

A reassurance.

For what was worth, Skye never needed to be assured of anything.

But life kept springing it on to her, regardless. It reassured her that the world is a cruel place, and that people can be just as much. That the system didn’t always work, but sometimes the right thing was to follow it despite of that. That a house might be stable on the outside, but fractured on the inside.

It was safe to say Skye had never given fate a second thought. If she needed a pat on the back, she surely would not have pulled things from thin air and held on to them like they had any actual meaning. She would have been her own reassurance. After all, she’d had only herself to fall back on almost her whole life.

In a crowded coffee shop, people bristled about, minding their business.

Waiting in line to order, Skye minded her own.

“Oh my god,” a squeal came from a table near her. “Carly! It’s absolutely meant to be!” A voice was echoing throughout the place, its owner shoving a coffee lid in their companion’s face. “See, you don’t need to worry about one thing! Even the lid says he will ask you out!”

How foolish, casting all your expectations on a plastic circle. If that girl thought just because a generic lid, made in a factory somewhere, would grant all her wishes true, she had to be delusional. Skye repressed the urge to roll her eyes. She was here to work, not get worked up. Tugging at the strap on her shoulder, the line moved her forward.

When it was her turn, Skye ordered the first thing that caught her eye on the board behind the barista. It made no difference to her what drink they’d make her as long as the network connection was stable and connected to her laptop.

“Oh, great choice! That’s my favorite drink,” the boy behind the counter winked. He had sandy blonde hair and tanned skin, with eyes that reminded Skye a little too much of another set with which she was too well acquaintanced with.

Shaking the thoughts away, Skye muttered her thanks and handed a few dollar bills over the counter. When he asked for her name, for a moment, she considered lying, telling him something common like Sarah or Mary. “Write down Skye,” was what came out.

“Pretty name,” the boy said, looking up. “For a pretty face.” He only got a small, tight smile in return.

A table by the windows had just opened up and Skye hurried to claim it for herself before anyone else could snatch it away. She set her bag down and pulled out a laptop. It wasn’t her own. This was something S.H.I.E.L.D. had issued for her. Despite her newly claimed status of a field agent, Coulson had insisted on Skye getting her own personalized computer, for hack duties. Which meant breaking into places where the rest of the team could not. It was what she excelled most at, after all.

Laptop charged up, network connection established, and the work began. Skye’s fingers typed furiously at the keyboard, each one knowing exactly where to hit without visual conformation needed. It was unreal how many buttons Skye had broken or jammed over the years. The count would probably have set a new Guinness record.

Tap, tap, tap the keys went. They were coming in at such a pace that the taps merged into each other, hard to keep track of. Tap, tap, tap.

Lost in her own little world, the laptop screen was the only thing in sight in Skye’s horizon. People walked by the shop’s window, cars drove up and down, noises cracked through the glass. Even inside it was a hustle. Orders were being yelled out, one atop another, the shouts piling up into a stack of vibrations. The line of people shortened, and then got long again. It moved as if it was the wavelength of the noise, swaying to an erratic rhythm.

Nobody called out her name. If they did – Skye hadn’t noticed. 

Nose buried in the laptop, her mind was busy processing all the different algorithms displayed on screen. It was not a though hack, the defenses weren’t too hard to crack. But it took patience. Concentration. Complete immersion in the task at hand. The thought of picking up her coffee order was tucked away somewhere in the back of Skye’s mind, shoved aside by S.H.I.E.L.D. duties.

It wasn’t until a cup appeared beside her laptop and the chair opposite hers creaked as someone made to sit on it. Flashing red lights went out in Skye’s mind, her eyes immediately snapped up, scanning the situation. She met the amber eyes of the boy who’d taken her order from across the table and her muscles relaxed. No imminent danger from any evil spy organization or the US authorities. She was safe, undetected, as she had been. Living to see another day, as they said. The barista smiled at her - a charming, sweet smile that brightened up his boyish features. He couldn’t have been older than twenty, still growing out that baby face.

“You didn’t come get your coffee, so I figured, why not get it to you?”

“Thought this was a serve yourself kind of place,” Skye replied, playing along. She was almost done with this hack anyway, just a few ounces of data left to transfer.

“We make exceptions for pretty ladies,” he flirted. Then added, “Plus, it was time for my lunch break.”

“Wow, way to make a girl feel special,” Skye joked.

The barista just chuckled. His eyes went to the still steaming cup next to Skye’s laptop. “Aren’t you going to take a look at it?”

“What? The lid? I’m not a believer in these things.”

“You don’t have to be one to enjoy a cute message. It might make your day.”

“Highly doubt that.”

“Oh, come on! Just one peek,” he pleaded. “Please?”

“You’re really passionate about this thing.”

“It’s what we’re known for, it’s a pity when customers don’t appreciate our trademark.”

“Well, if it’s for the trademark…” Skye took ahold of the cup and lifted the lid off. On its otherside, in black cursive lettering, was the special fortune meant just for her (she said sarcastically). Reading the words, Skye felt her face pale for a split second. Then she regained composure. It was just a stupid, generic coffee cup lid.

Forgive him, it said.

There were a million other lids with the same exact phrase written on them. The chances of her getting it were the same as each and every other person’s in this shop. Just a coincidence. A very surprising one, but a coincidence all the same. Skye took a deep breath. Why was she hyperventilating about this? It’s not like someone specifically wrote it for her, much less intend it to be for the person she was thinking of now. She was being ridiculous. She was acting crazy.

Just a simple coincidence, Skye repeated to herself. Do not get worked up over nothing. Get a grip, agent. She wanted to slap herself for being so silly. Over a lid, nonetheless. What was wrong with her? (Skye chose to ignore the fact that her mind went straight to him as she read the words.)

“Ooh, not a good one, I presume?”

Skye glanced up at the barista in front of her, completely forgetting for a moment that he was sitting there. “I told you already, I don’t believe in these kinds of stuff. Fortune cookies don’t work on me either,” she smirked at him.

“Good to know,” the boy replied. “Cause those bastards from the fortune cookie bussines are total fakes. We’re the real deal.” Then winked.

“Sure you are.”

After a beat, the barista asked. “Why is a pretty face like you alone? Don’t you ladies usually travel in posees or something?”

“Oh, I do have a posee, as you put it,” Skye replied. But it’s currently on an undercover operation. “But everyone needs some solitude every once and a while, eh?”

“Touche,” he pointed. “I’ve never seen you around here before though, so you must not seek solitude very often.”

“I’m not from around here.”

“Ah, a tourist! How remarkable,” the barista laughed. “And where do you come from, darlin’?”

A secret base for superspies. “Away,” Skye smiled.

Just then the same girls from before started squealing again, passing coffee lids around their table. Skye huffed in exasperation. “Could you believe those girls? Falling over a coffee lid like it just solved all their problems.”

“Not all their problems, just a few. And some people like holding on to that hope these little messages bring them.”

“From a factory made plastic cap? I played with a Magic 8 ball when I was little - if you shook it enough times, it eventually gave you the answer you wanted. I know how this hoax works.”

“Oh, these aren’t factory made. Each fortune is handwritten by the coffee shop’s staff.” A beep sounded from the watch on his wrist then, and the barista stood to leave. “Well, there went my break. It was nice chatting with you, Skye.” He was already walking away but said over his shoulder, “even if you are a nonbeliever.”

Skye looked at her lid again. The words stared back at her as thought about how all these messages were handwritten.

Forgive him.

So what if they were? It was still a pure coincidence that she got exactly this one. The staff no doubtfully got them all from some website on the Internet or something. There were plenty of those floating around. It didn’t mean anything. But as she went back to work, Skye’s mind kept drifting back to the lid.

As soon as the hack was done, Skye packed up her stuff and left. The coffee sat on the table abandoned, cold and untouched. She hadn’t taken even one sip from it.

It was all nonsense, her rational thoughts were saying, trying to convince that part of her mind that just wouldn’t let the subject drop. As Skye was walking down the street, she reminded herself that there was no such thing as fate. Coincidences were a thing, but fate was not. Neither was destiny. Neither was anything related.

People had choices, decisions they’d made, were making, would make. Those decisions were what shaped their lives, not some ludicrous higher power. There was no path written down for anyone. Each person paved their own. Skye firmly believed that.

But, a small voice in her head interrupted, wasn’t it fate that S.H.I.E.L.D. requited you? Your whole life is tied to it, from all sides. Why not believe that it was in your destiny?

No.

I do believe that some things are mean to be.

Skye ignored all these thoughts, focusing instead on the faces she passed by. All her relations to S.H.I.E.L.D. were coincidences.

S.H.I.E.L.D. is your home, you were lead to it.

Skye planned out the most difficult hack she knew in her mind.

Waiting at a crosswalk for the light to change, Skye looked ahead, at the people on the other side of the road. She would’ve dismissed the eyes she saw staring back at her if it weren’t for the fact that she knew them. She knew the face, and she knew the man it belonged to.

Well, I’ll be damned.

The light went green and the people started moving.

Grant Ward smiled as their paths crossed again, the separated. With the look of pure bewilderment on her face, Skye turned back to make sure it was him.

It was.

Dressed in a crisp suit, her former S.O. was walking down the street she’d just come from. It’d been a while since she last saw him, since he managed to escape going into Senator Ward’s custody. The only real contact she had had with Grant Ward had been a short phone call, months ago, when he’d sent them over the nicely wrapped present of HYDRA agent, one Sunil Bakshi, also known as Daniel Whitehall's right hand man.

Skye, instead of reaching for the sat phone in her pocket to alert the team, brought her thoughts back to her coffee lid.

Forgive him.

It was only a coincidence that she would get that fortune and see him in the same city, not even a half hour later. She tried to convince herself of that.

Skye may not have believed in fate, but even she couldn’t deny its twisted sense of humor.


End file.
